i want to throw up on your naked body (stop pretending to be a hero)
by WeAreTomorrow
Summary: "Tony sleeps less then did he before and at this rate, they're gonna need to start adding hours to the day. Somehow he saves himself and then Pepper and then the world. He should probably see a therapist, at some point." - Tony is not okay. Mentions of Pepper/Tony. Eventual Steve/Tony.
1. Chapter 1

**It's been awhile, guys. Hello again.** **Hope you enjoy it.**

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He's spent his entire life walking around in shoes too big for his feet, with too much money in his pockets and too much alcohol in his bloodstream, too much fuck you bravado to be taken seriously.

He's spent his entire life being Tony Stark.

He does not let people take him seriously because the world laid siege to him since the first time paparazzi lights flashed in his scrunched up baby-face as Maria Stark left the hospital. His father is in Berlin at the time and that's exactly the kind of opening a story like this deserves. They have laid siege and he will not give them the satisfaction of letting them know how hungry he is. How starved he is for a little taste of genuine human interaction.

So. He spends his entire life like it's another credit card that'll never max out.

He keeps spending it and spending it and when he comes back from Afghanistan, he looks at the aftermath of the person he ceased being and thinks, _I just woke up_ and _good morning_. It hits him like a piano or the butt end of a pistol to the head. It hits in his knees and the bones that go from his wrists to his elbows. It aches like growing pains and sometimes he is just so disgustingly _grateful_.

The realization hollows out his teeth like hard liquor, which makes sense because most truths are 80% hard liquor in Tony's experience.

Mostly though, he thinks things like, _I wish somebody would wake me up when I have nightmares_ and _the world is a pretty stupid place_. Gratitude doesn't chase away the grind of sand against his teeth when he spits in the sink, because his anger is just as genuine and hard to swallow. His mouth is dry from swallowing.

That's not sexual. Tony mostly stops being sexual when he comes back from Afghanistan.

He showers until the top layer of his skin erodes and tries to fuck the smell of blood out of his system but instead the back of his neck gets damp with sweat and when he says _yeah baby, right there_ what he means is _I was so scared of dying_.

All of his stories start like this: before I came back from Afghanistan, or, after I came back from Afghanistan.

It's like he's still got grit crusted into the creases of his body and most days he's afraid of slowing down, afraid that if he does people will the notice him shaking to pieces, leaking from all the gaping holes in his emotional psyche. His ligaments creak in the morning when he uncurls into daylight and Tony wishes he were just a goddamn machine already so that he can fix himself.

The cheeseburger is not cutting it.

There's a moral here though. He's spent his entire life wasting it.

This was the warning shot. Tony is luckier than most people; he's realized what he owes the world and has the resources to follow through. Not sleeping much helps; it's productive. There's a little word called redemption that's stuck in his head.

Because Tony doesn't know how to fix himself—and will somebody just tell him that It Gets Better already, please?—but suspects he's been broken for years now and this, _this_, he can do like the blueprints are sketched in the veins of his eyelids, simply waiting for him to bring them to life. _Make me a real boy_, he thinks and this is a very serious request.

The world takes Ironman very seriously but see, Tony can still make them laugh when he wants to.

He is in his element; he loves the way titanium alloy melts and fills up room with heat and welding fumes, loves the copper zing pressed against his tongue when he bites down on whatever essential piece of machinery his hands are too full to hold, loves the way his blueprints take on a tangible third dimension and, more and more, he loves the way metal doesn't remind him of sand.

It's one of the few things that doesn't.

So he drinks coffee until his eyes start focusing and welds metal onto metal onto metal until there are no chinks in his armour and the blue sparks blur in his vision to become blue sky and, fuck, _sometimes he cannot breathe_.

He presses a hand to his arc reactor and wonders if CPR can be performed on his body.

He wakes up in complete darkness with terror stuffed in the back of his throat like a gag because _nobody is going to save them_. He chokes on his own fear like an animal, clawing the cave wall with blunt fingers that are made of flesh and bleed and break and have you ever had all the joints in your pinky broken? The pain settles into the curves of his body like sediments, like an avalanche, clogging his lungs and the pathways leading to his frontal lobe and he is _so fucking scared_.

Tony wakes up in complete darkness and he came back from Afghanistan, he came back from Afghanistan, he came _back from Afghanistan, he_—is broken, if you know what strings to pull.

He feels like a puppet, the tremors in his hands out of his control.

Tony sleeps without a shirt on after that, if he sleeps, and the light of his arc reactor on the ceiling is the only thing keeping him sane sometimes. It's always cold when he places a hand to it and it helps, helps him to separate the memories of _heatsweatsand_ into _heat _and _sweat_ and _sand_. It's less potent that way.

It hits him one night, stumbling up from his workshop into the kitchen after not eating for a few days, his body on the verge of passing out. He should probably stop doing this.

Starvation smells like dried fruits and alcohol. This is a scientific fact. The body breaks down proteins in a last greedy effort to live, molecules simplified into ketones. He thinks that might be irony right there, that the body is reduced to eating itself while you smell like raspberry parfait.

Pepper smells like raspberries sometimes when he lets her come close enough.

Still, the moral of this story is that Tony needed a wake-up call, needed a warning shot to get him running in the right direction. He likes to think he's doing okay, the transition out of weaponry going well. He's doing okay.

Occasionally, if he's tired enough, he can sleep the whole night through. He stops feeling sand between his toes and his showers don't raise red welts on his back and upper arms. Pepper is laughing at his jokes again and Tony can look at her and think _amazing_ instead of _if you had been sitting across from me signing autographs the explosion would have sent shrapnel through your neck right into your voice box and the combination of shock and pain would have made you pass out before the blood loss killed you and I would never hear your voice again_.

He can think _amazing_ most days now. Sometimes, he even thinks about saying it out loud.

Then Stane kind of literally rips his heart out of his chest and leaves with his arc reactor tucked under one arm like a shopping bag. How long has that one been on the grocery list?

It all gets a little fucked up after that. There's a lot of booze involved.

_Give me a scotch. I'm starving_—he says, and it's the closest he's come to confession in a long time. See, Tony is not a nice person. This is just a fact and he has never been good at saying the things he means to.

His body feels violated, aching from the shots he keeps forcing through his liver. It makes no sense that he keeps coming back to the word _rape_, but he can't help it. It wasn't sexual, it was predatory and he tries to fuck it out of his system but instead the back of his neck gets damp with sweat and when he says _yeah baby, right there_ what he means is _I want to throw up on your naked body_.

It doesn't stop him though, working through sex with the slow burn of alcohol in his system and he feels sick, slick with nausea and self-pity and dissipating ethanol. He might be punishing himself. He might be trying to prove something. He might be in mourning.

For who he thought Stane was or who he thought he could be, who knows.

The word redemption still rattles around his head sometimes, but it mostly just hurts. He's got a new one though: vengeance.

_You put your hand in my chest_, Tony thinks with his dick inside of somebody and her hands clawing at his shoulders, _and I killed you_. Mazeltov.

He learns this about life too—it's harder to die when you can feel the expiration date.

He thinks of Yinsen bent over his body, playing Operator with tools that he sharpened on a rock before disinfecting with flame and gin. He thinks of Yinsen bleeding out between his fingers, catching bullets for him. Thinks of Yinsen's village and how burning flesh isn't a smell he can febreeze out of his clothes. Ironman has a death toll, now, to match the one of Tony Stark.

Vengeance is a hard liquor word, burning his throat on the way up. He came back from Afghanistan, damn it. He comes back every morning.

Tony sleeps less then did he before and at this rate, they're gonna need to start adding hours to the day.

He pictures Yinsen at his birthday party, the dusty lines of his face thick with disappointment. Tony closes his faceplate until he can fake a smile at the bartender and drinks until he forgets what the hell the Middle East is anyway. Things don't make a lot of sense after that, except for the parts where people try to kill him.

Somehow he saves himself and then Pepper and then the world. He should probably see a therapist, at some point.

Actually, he's not feeling too bad about himself when he sits down across from Nick Fury and gets his heart broken like a teenage girl. It wouldn't be so bad if they had some other codeword. At least that's how Tony comforts himself. But the name Avengers sets his lungs on fire, burning his tongue. You know, by now he'd have thought someone would figure out that _I don't work well with others_ is just another way of saying _I've been failing to get people to love me for years_. It's something of a lifestyle, at this point.

It's a hard-liquor moment, and who is he to deny a little drink? Let's propose a toast to Ironman, who could've been a hero if it weren't for the person inside him.

Things still don't make a lot of sense, but Pepper lets him kiss her so Tony decides to roll with it. It might be a pity-fuck, but when the back of his neck gets damp with sweat he says _yeah baby, right there_ and what he means is _I've been wanting you for years_. With her tangled into his sheets, feet wrapped around his ankles and the light of the arc reactor on the ceiling, Tony sleeps for hours at a time. But.

Shit continues to hit the fan. Someone should really consider turning the damn thing off.

_Big man in a suit of armour_, Rogers says, mouth twisting like a cork out of a bottle and he is unbraced for the reek of truth in the words that hit his unmasked face. Not unmasked exactly, he is being Tony Stark. _Take that away and what are you?_

Tony has zero answers but his mouth takes care of it for him—_genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist_, you want his resume, just ask—and it feels like he's been training for this moment since he first looked up 'sarcasm'. His body lets him down anyway, shuddering in anger, put in tailspin from the way he crashes into his childhood idol. His fingernails are too short to cause his palm serious damage but not for lack of trying.

This fight has been a long time coming, he's not gonna side-step it now just because it's Steve-fucking-Rogers telling him he's a little boy playing dress up instead of Fury or Coulson or even Pepper.

He's been waiting for this fight since the very moment he stood up at that press conference and said, _I am Ironman_. He's been waiting for somebody to tell him he's not the good guy.

It's all in his resume, go ahead. Take a look.

_I know guys with none of that worth ten of you_, Tony is told and thinks, _get in line Captain_, _you're hardly the only one. _He could list a half-dozen people who should be standing here poised on the threshold of saving the world again, shoulder to shoulder with the icon of Everything Nice And Swell America Should Stand For. A list that starts with all the soldiers in the truck with him the day that Everything Went To Shit.

Funny, how he still isn't over this. Every time he signs his name. Jesus fuck, do you even know how often that it?

Tony opens his mouth to call him out on sexism. He knows women worth hundreds of him. Pepper has been more or less running his company since he hired her, has been running _him_ since he Came Back From Afghanistan.

_The only thing you really fight for is yourself_, says Rogers, like he's looking through his two-way mirror and seeing an empty room on the other side. And that. That hurts, whites out his brain like an electrical failure. Tony wants to spit back in his face, tell him, _nobody has given me anything else to fight for_. Or, _I thought you loved lost causes_.

It pools low in his stomach like the urge to vomit; he rides out a wave of visceral, animal instinct to lash out at those high and mighty cheekbones.

_You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play_, Rogers says, looking him in the eyes, _to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you_. And fuck you, Captain America, he's got blood on his hands and a hole in his chest plugged up with grief and machine wires that unravel over time. The closest thing he had to a father stuck his hands inside his open wounds like a cookie jar and tried to flick the switch to corpse.

He hasn't got a lot of people who stick around for him to lay the wire down.

There's a moment where he breathes after the sentence impacts and nobody jumps to his defense, which is exactly why he has built his walls so high and thick in the first place.

He can tell you the names of all the people who have died for him and he needs more than the fingers on both hands. The knowledge makes his joints ache and pop. _I'm sorry_, he tells Yinsen's dead face in his head, _that my life couldn't be a little more worth it_. He's working on it, honest-to-god trying to restructure his legacy and his life.

It's the wires in his head he can't reroute as easily and he feels _this close_ to short-circuiting most of the time.

He is human in the worst possible way and the truth is that Tony is not very good with humans. He can't just overwrite the old programming, can't just update update update until the bugs in the system are worked out. It's too vulnerable like this, with skin and sweat and adrenalin flooding his frontal lobe.

_I think I would just cut the wire_, Tony answers because what else is there to say?

_Always a way out_, he sneers and really, Tony should be proud that he was able to put such an ugly look on Rogers' face. The intensity of his anger is unavoidable, entire body dedicated to the emotion and it ripples through him like lightening. He stands there in the spotlight of derision and feels oddly unsurprised with the way the argument unfolds like origami paper. The conversation was shaped like a middle finger from the start.

For the sake of emotional stability, he should probably stop trying to connect with the people he looks up to.

They dislike him and/or end up dying.

_You know, you may not be a threat, _Rogers takes a step closer, projecting like radio waves and there's no ignoring the message—_but you better stop pretending to be a hero_.

And there, finally somebody's said it.

Stop pretending to be a hero, Stark.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hope you like this, drop me a comment to let me know if you did.**  
**The more reviews I get the longer my stories are ;)**  
**Yes. That was bribery.**

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The thing about space is that he _actually cannot breathe_. Other than that, it's nice.

He always wanted to go to space as a child.

He sacrifices himself for New York City, and that's a little thing some would call _irony_ or, as Pepper would say _Tony being difficult again, trying to prove everybody wrong_. He doesn't end up dying but it's thought that counts, right? Turns out CPR isn't necessary, all it takes is a Hulk. Tony is pretty okay with not dying, if he's honest, even if it lessens the impact of the gesture. Suffocation is an awful way to go he's found, and next time can't somebody just shoot him? You'd think, given his line of work it wouldn't be so much to ask for.

The moment he inhales—and sweet Jesus, why doesn't anybody appreciate how _good_ air feels whistling through lungs? He is going to start pushing technology for air purification the moment he get can get his hands on a StarkPad and—his mouth starts moving again, to hold back the tears.

The moment he inhales Tony is hit by relief so profound all the muscles in his body go slack and he's only 60% sure he hasn't peed himself.

His suit takes care of it, just like Tony built it to, because when nobody jumps to your defense and you've been at siege for years, the only choice you have is to make yourself untouchable, impenetrable. The mask hides his expression on the way to the Swarma restaurant and when it opens to let Tony eat, there is no evidence on his face to suggest anything other than confidence.

Across the table, Roger's face is just as unhelpful as his own, giving nothing away, but it was the first thing Tony saw upon revival. This is nothing to read into; he reads into it anyway.

He is not good with people but the laugh that leaked out of Captain America when Tony inhaled was full of happiness. The sound wrecks something in his chest, tightening his gut, and he should be angry at the damage but wants to listen to it anyway. He's never taken care of his body, why start now?

Nobody is laughing now though, eating Swarma in the ruins of the city he loves fiercely like a child. New York is as close to home as he'll let the word come.

His insides feel hollowed out when he looks outside the shop window. He chews on his food and it tastes like guilt, like _you should've done more_, like _there is going to be a death toll_, like _if only you had figured this out sooner, aren't you supposed to be the genius here? _Tony keeps trying to say something, silence crushing and accusing and he wonders if they blame him for not seeing this coming, if they'll kick him off the team with politely apologetic faces.

_I'm sorry_, they'd say, _we tried but it's just not going to work_. It's not us, it's you.

Swallowing past his dry mouth, he tells himself to stop acting like a kid with a crush. He did attempt to die for the mission, that'll keep him around until the next disaster at least when Coulson comes calling with that squished look of disagreement and—

_Coulson is dead_, Tony says out loud without meaning to, as it hits him. It's just, he's _dead_.

The rest of the team looks up, as the knowledge sinks into their pores. Clint digs his nails into his forearms so casually Tony wouldn't have noticed, if he weren't so good at that trick himself. The archer looks wrecked, like all the bones in his body are splintering under the weight of his guilt. _It's not your fault_, Tony wants to say because _he's_ the one that brought Loki back to the base. But words are never going to be enough and he knows exactly what it feels like to have the product of your hands and your brain turned against what you were trying to protect in the first place.

They hijacked his free will; even the idea of it is so violating that Tony shudders in his seat. The world makes less sense than it did twenty-four hours ago and _magic is real_ and what can mortals do in face of that?

_Wait_, Bruce swallows, looking green around the edges, _Coulson is dead?_

And, well. Shit.

Glances flit around the table like a merry-go-round. It's Captain America who finally steps up, voice gentle like he's approaching, well, like he's approaching an emotionally fragile, skittish human being who could at any moment turn into an indestructible rage-monster and lay waste to a city already in shock.

_Loki got him_, Rogers explains as Clint tries to sink into his chair, shoulders hunched up to his ears.

_And where was I? _Bruce asks, knowing the answer. The question lingers in the air.

Eventually, Natasha squares her shoulders and looks him in the eye. _You were fighting me, Bruce_.

An angry, wounded sound is ripped from the back of his throat, half-Hulk and half-human. They are all superheroes of the finest caliber Fury could find, have faced down terrorists and Nazis and deranged alien princes. They have defeated magic and science and death despite all odds and logic. And still, the sound makes everybody at the table flinch.

Bruce stands, unsteadily, breathing hard. _I'm just gonna go_, he manages through clenched teeth, _fresh air_. He stumbles out into the wreckage like a drunk.

The silence left behind is thick with unspoken things, nobody meeting his eyes over the table top. Tony wants to apologize, wants to dig nails into his skin, wants to kick himself for the way his mouth says all the wrong things without trying. Clint looks sick with emotion and vulnerable and he's_sorry_, he didn't mean to say it out loud. He wonders—if all three of them claim responsibility for Coulson's death, than did the man technically die three times?

_Clint and I will follow him_, Natasha says, standing with her shoulders back and chin firm in the structure of her face. She looks like she could go another ten rounds, fight another invasion and this woman is human, how is that possible? Even Thor looks ready to sleep for a week straight, the skin around his mouth and eyes sagging. _Make sure he stays out of trouble_.

_When he's calmed down_, Tony tells her, _bring him back to Stark Tower._

He doesn't bother asking her if she needs a key to get in, he knows she kept her all-access pass from when she was pretending to be his assistant. Even if she hadn't, he doubts that would hold her up for long. The knowledge that a SHEILD assassin can break into all of his buildings—though not his labs, and not his mind where he keeps all of his most important blueprints anyways—should possibly worry him.

Natasha tilts her head curiously, _Stark Tower?_

The rest of the team looks just as confused. Did they not know? Well, they don't all have personal AI systems to hack into classified files. _I don't want him to end up sleeping on street corners again_, he explains, _and SHEILD's room for him isn't even trying to pretend it's not a cage_.

Natasha's mouth twists downward but she doesn't disagree. Her sharp nod lets him relax in his seat as she leaves, Clint slinking out after her.

Rogers' eyes are slicing into the side of his face.

Even when Thor coughs awkwardly into the heavy silence, Tony can't bring himself to turn and look at the god, knowing his eyes will have to slide past Rogers'_. I regret to inform you that I must depart_, Thor says, sounding genuinely sorry, _alas my Jane awaits me_. Thor says _my Jane_ with such tenderness that his wrists ache like an old man in the rain. Tony slaps a wide grin on his face and closes his eyes as he turns his head. _Good for you man_, he says, opening his eyes to Thor's earnest facial hair, _nice to have somebody waiting for you to come home, huh?_

Rogers' eyes are heating up the other side of his face now, like a rug-burn.

The bell on the door rings loudly as it falls shut behind Thor's broad shoulders and then it's just him and Captain America. Tony wonders if it would be rude to pack up and leave, take the rest home for the morning. Pepper's always on his case about not eating leftovers though; he forgets or can't be bothered when fresh takeout is an order away.

And, oh shit. _Pepper_.

He should probably call her, let her know he'll be back soon. It's past midnight in Malibu though, what if he wakes her up? It'll be better just to show up in person, apologize if she's awake, crawl into bed if she's not. _Mind if I get the check?_ he asks of Rogers' elbow, already gesturing to the guy behind the counter.

_Um_, Rogers says, surprised. _Yeah, thanks, I don't really bring money with me in the suit._

Tony feels his mouth turn up despite himself, pulling a few fifties from his wallet. From shoulder to ankle, Captain America is nothing but spandex and rippling muscle; it's not subtle, and not designed with pockets. Thinking about it, Tony's probably lucky he happened to have his wallet in his jeans when he suited up. The places he goes usually have a tab under his name. _Here you go_, he says, trying to hand over the money to the man—probably the shop owner, he realizes—approaching the table. The owner grins, his mouth full of crooked teeth, and shakes his head.

_You save my city_, the man says, accent heavy, _you no pay_.

While Tony stares at him, mouth open in surprise, the man pushes something into his palm. His fingers closes around it immediately, even as he protests—_but, we ate like half your shop, dude. _The owner continues to shake his head and something like warmth spreads in his chest. He looks helplessly at Rogers for support, forgetting about eye-contact, but the man does is shrug.

The owner herds them toward the door, and winks. _You pay next time._

The bell dings as it shuts behind them and Tony uncurls his hand to see a fortune cookie. He can't help but throw back his head and laugh until his throat feels like sandpaper. When he wipes tears from his eyes, Rogers is looking at him carefully, unsure if Tony is about to collapse or go crazy. He's not sure himself; the adrenalin is wearing off and the back of his mind is buzzing with white noise and he's going to have nightmares about this and he might have _died_ today. Magic is real and aliens can suck your willpower out of your chest.

It hasn't sunk in yet, how fucked up this is, but he's afraid it'll shatter him when it does.

_We're not his soldiers_, Tony had said because, hello. Authority issues, trust issues, cannot-work-with-others issues—he has more issues than a magazine, more hang-ups than a laundry line, more problems than a Geometry textbook. He belongs to himself only because nobody jumps to his defense when he breathes after impact and he refuses to follow orders blindly when all of his life he's been finding better solutions.

The only thing Tony has ever been able to count on is his own brain.

_He gave me a fortune cookie_, he tries to explain but it's not something that can be explained with words really and Rogers looks blank, _did they not have these back in the forties?_

He gets a half-shrug as a response and a curious glance.

Feeling generous, Tony offers it to him. _Go ahead, you'll like this._

The quirk of Rogers' eyebrows is unconvinced, but he takes the cookie with a polite _thanks_ so he'll call it a win. For a moment, they just look at each other. Tony shoves his hands into his pockets up to the wrists, uncertainty catching him off-guard. All of a sudden he's deeply grateful that he trained himself out of blushing years ago. There's just something about Steve Rogers that makes him shy, that cuts through his bullshit and leaves him flustered, flushed.

_So_, he says cheerfully, cursing his brain, _I guess I'll see you around then, Cap._

_Yeah_, Rogers says, quietly, looking lost. Like, literally looking lost, squinting at the blasted street signs and roads blocked with rubble.

_Um_, he says before over-thinking it, _mind if I walk you home, actually? Your place is on the way. _The tension seeps out of the other man's shoulders like the offer is a bathtub drain, swirling away and leaving a smile curved into the corner of Rogers' mouth. _Yeah_, he answers, _I don't mind_.

And that's how Tony ends up walking Captain America home, palms slick with sweat like he's on a first date.


	3. Chapter 3

**So, remember when I said "Eventual Tony/Steve"? Yup, we are not there yet.**  
**Drop me a line and let me know what you think ^^**

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They stand in the middle of Captain America's living room, looking at the street through what used to be a wall. A giant slab of cement is rammed through the TV, the couch is singed by—is that? Yeah. Repulsor beams.

Well, shit. That's kind of awkward.

He steps over the head and shoulders of an alien carcass to peer down onto the street, where the sirens of a smashed car are still wailing. The floor is splattered with blood like some kind of modern art deco leading into the kitchen, where a pair of disembodied legs rest innocently against the fridge. Tony doesn't remember smashing into this particular apartment, doesn't remember the lack of microwave or the old-fashioned kitchen timer with bells on top, but that's because all he really remembers is the smell of burning Chitauri meat being circulated out of his helmet and the satisfaction of crunching bone.

He remembers Clint's voice in head, and Captain America and the extra-spicy pleasure of killing an alien that had the jump on a team mate.

Tony sneaks a careful look at Rogers' glazed eyes as the man kneels, hands fumbling with papers that've been scattered across the ground, some of them still smoldering gently. Not papers, sketches.

He bends over to help, scooping the rest up into his arms, trying to shake off the settled layer of soot. The topmost drawing must have been a portrait, there's a hole burned right through the lower half of a masculine face. He winces—definitely repulsor beams. Looking closer, he realizes with no small amount of shock that not only is it a portrait, it's _beautiful_. The slope of the nose. The delicate crease between eyebrows. The dark hair tangled from wind or restless hands or sleeping too late.

For a moment Tony is caught between inhale and exhale, gut clenching with the knowledge that _this is a picture of him_.

Except, of course it's not. He breathes out.

The dark hair is too short on the sides, the slope of the nose too flat, the shape of the head slightly different. He's seen his face plastered across enough magazines covers and company memos to recognize himself. His gut doesn't unclench, though.

_Here you go_, Tony says, pushing the sketches toward Rogers who clutches them to his chest like he's drowning, eyes still glazed over, thumb tracing the burned edges like a wound and Tony has the sudden feeling he is intruding on something that's not his to see.

_Thanks for walking me home, _Rogers says through barely moving lips, toneless like an automated message, _I can take it from here._

His words are cold, chilly. Tony bristles out of instinct, mouth opening to fire off a cheap shot, a distraction while he tightens his composure. Offense is the best defense, right? But he grits his teeth against the response trying to force its way out of his mouth and gambles instead. _Look_, he says, rolling for the double sixes, _you can't stay here. Let me set you up at Stark Tower._

_Is that an order, Stark? _Rogers' sneers at him, eyes hard as they turn to meet his, fingers clenched white around his sketches. Before the rejection impacts, Tony has a absurd moment where he wants to say, _careful, you'll wrinkle the paper_.

And then it punches up through his stomach, hot in his chest like acid or Happy's cooking or heartburn, Rogers using his height to the full advantage to look down on him. Okay, he gets it: Captain America and Ironman might work together but that's where the line is drawn. It'll get better, he'll get used the intensity of this dislike. For now though, Tony just is why he never got into gambling, see? Bad karma. Tony closes his eyes, wishing for the _schnick _of his faceplate, for the way his suit keeps him from having to touch the world. He just isn't good at humans.

_Fine, princess_, he says reflexively, retreating back into himself, _personally, I think you need all the beauty sleep you can get. But then again, if seventy years didn't fix that face of yours, we can probably give up now. Wait, it's the inside that counts, right? Don't worry, nobody puts Baby in a corner. You'll be all over the news tomorrow, just like old times._

The cultural reference is just unnecessary, but it helps him get a grip as he scrambles to dig his nails into this thing called self-control. He's out the door and half-way down the steps before Rogers' answer rings out after him.

_For some of us it's not about the fame, Stark. But that's okay, I'm sure someone will spare you an interview or two._

And then he's outside, trying to stand up straight and call Jarvis and breathe at the same time. Hands on his knees, dizzy from anger and accusation and _I tried to fucking die for you asshole_. The car alarm is still wailing in the background. Something crashes and then everything is quiet, except for the pulsing of his heart in his ears. Even when he stops shaking enough to pull out his phone, his voice is still rough, like he's been thoroughly choked for a while.

Throat raw, spine aching, Tony says—_take me home Jarvis_.

Usually flying is the one thing he can always rely on to clear his head, letting the slits of his suit open just enough for the wind to rush through and keep his thoughts from swallowing his brain. It's not working tonight though and he barely registers the fact that he's crossing the state line of California until he's touching down outside of his house in Malibu. Jarvis says quietly _Pepper is waiting for you inside_ and opens the door for him.

Pepper is not just waiting for him, she is drunk.

And he is so not equipped to deal with this tonight, or ever. He didn't even know she could get drunk, has witnessed her tipsy less times then he's saved the world from supervillians and not for lack of trying.

_Tony_, she says, tear tracks carved into her face. _You called me and I didn't pick up._

_Oh, Pepper_, he answers, letting his suit fall away from him, and tries to hold her. She places both hands against his shoulders, bracing herself. She is careful not to touch his arc reactor. Usually it's more subtle, more natural, but he's been noticing for weeks now how she finds excuses to pretend his reactor doesn't exist, picking out shirts thick enough to block the light, curling away from the press of metal at night. And now, coordination shot to hell, she places her fingers carefully to only touch the parts of him that are human.

_I thought you were dead_, she says, hiccupping, _Why didn't you call me again?_

_I wasn't sure if you would be asleep or not, _he whispers into her hair and when spoken out loud the logic of his reasons crumble away. She laughs and it's not a pretty sound. _I'm sorry, Pepper, next time I swear I'll do better._

_Next time, _she says, words cut loose from the wreckage of her voice.

_Next time, _he promises and misses the point entirely.


End file.
